Are you running your MSP or is your MSP running you?

Firefighting! It's probably something that takes up a fair proportion of your working days, right?

And it's kind of what you sign up for when you start your MSP. Being reactive to clients' needs is part of the job.

I don't mean the big OMG moments, such as when a client gets breached and everyone drops everything.

I mean the routine reactive stuff, such as getting their internet back online, a password change, or setting up the new starter urgently because they forgot to tell you 3 days ago that someone new was starting 🙄

There's always going to be reactive work. That's only a big problem when your MSP's structure means every single issue, question, and decision still finds its way back to YOU, as the business owner or manager.

When that happens, you’ve become the bottleneck that slows the whole business down.

I know this because it happened to me

In my first business back in 2007, when I had two or three members of staff, I was working 70 to 80 hours a week. And the business still wasn’t growing.

In fact, I was making less money with staff, an office and more clients than I had made working in my own spare bedroom.

Because every decision was stuck behind me. Not just the important ones. Every decision. Without realising it I had staff acting as assistants rather than people who could operate independently and do what needed to be done within the business.

Eventually I had created a structure where I was the bottleneck to all progress. And until I admitted that, nothing was going to change.

The distinction that changes everything

There’s a distinction that took me too long to properly understand. Working IN the business versus working ON it.

Supporting a client is working IN the business. Fixing a ticket is working IN the business. Answering a question your technician should be able to answer themselves is working IN the business.

Whereas... improving how the business operates, developing your people, creating capacity for growth, deciding where the business goes next... that’s working ON it.

Both Michael Gerber in The E-Myth Revisited and John Warrillow in Built to Sell make this point brilliantly. The owners who build valuable businesses are the ones who transition from being the best technician in the room to being the person who builds the room.

Most MSP owners never make that transition. Not because they don’t want to, but because they never set out with the intent to do this and then protect the time to do it.

An idea: Make a daily 90 minute commitment to working ON the business

Here’s what I eventually did. I drew a line in the sand and committed to 90 minutes every single working day, working ON the business rather than IN it.

I was tempted at first to put one day a week aside, probably Fridays. But then I realised that that one day a week can very easily be eaten up by catching up on the other things you didn't do Monday to Thursday!

Instead I got up early every single weekday and spent 90 minutes working only ON the business.

It was painful at first. I'm not going to tell you what time I got up because it will make you wince. But it soon became a solid habit.

And I grew my first business to £1m revenue and a successful exit, just on those 90 minutes a day.

Because that 90 minutes a day soon compounds into 450 minutes a week. Seven and a half hours of strategic time working on growing the business.

350+ hours a year, every year.

😃 WOW 😃

If that can't change your business and in turn change your life, nothing else will.

Looking at it that way, the question isn’t whether you can find 90 minutes. You can. The question is whether you’re willing to protect it when something urgent tries to steal it.

And of course something always tries.

Training, not babysitting

The other part of this is letting your team do the work you hired them to do.

If a first line technician asks you a question, the temptation is to just answer it. You know the answer so it’s faster. But every time you do that, you’re training them to ask you again next time rather than figure it out themselves.

DOH-DOH-DOH.

Instead of giving them answers, ask them questions instead.

Ask them what they think the answer is. Ask them to walk you through their reasoning. By doing this you're training them to think and trust their gut feel.

Over time, fewer things rely on you because your team has learned what they’re empowered to handle.

Let me put this in a slightly more aggressive way... stop interfering with password resets simply because you can do them faster! That’s not leadership. That’s just being the most expensive first line tech in the building.

Drawing your own line in the sand

The practical starting point is simpler than most people expect.

Look at your calendar and find where 90 minutes can happen every working day. The same time each day works best. Also find a specific place to work where you won’t be interrupted.

Tell your team what you’re doing and why. Tell your family too. The people around you need to understand why this time matters and help you protect it.

Then decide what you’ll use that time for first. Not a vague intention to “work on the business.” Pick something you'll focus on every day. The more specific you are about what you're going to do with that time, the better return you'll get from it.

Reactive work will always exist in an MSP. It never goes away entirely. But it no longer needs to control your whole day. The moment you start protecting strategic time and trusting your team to do what you hired them for, you start building a business that can grow without every decision waiting for you.

Question: How many hours have you spent so far this week working ON your business rather than IN it? Let me know. I read and reply to every email 😃